Whenever the Conficker worm comes up here on OSNews (or any other site for that matter) there are always a number of people who point their fingers towards Redmond, stating that it's their fault Conifcker got out. While Microsoft has had some pretty lax responses to security threats in the past, it handled the whole Conficker thing perfectly, releasing a patch even before Conficker existed, and pushing it through Windows Update. In any case, this made me wonder about Linux distributions and security. What if a big security hole pops up in a Linux distribution - who will the Redmond-finger-pointing people hold responsible?

Hmmm... Even ignoring the fact that the analogy totally falls apart because, in a malware breach of security, there's an individual actively trying to break the system, this still has issues.

I like car analogies, just because today they (cars) are almost as easy to hack as any other system that runs on software.

Needless to say, whether the car was free or not, if someone hacks your bluetooth interface and makes your car reboot when you are doing 80 miles per hour on a high-way, the car manufacturer would have to pay the damages as you cannot avoid product liability in the car industry.